Today’s claim that a Chinese spy in his 20s cruising the Westminster drinks circuit might pose a threat to the British state is absurd. MPs always overstate their role in foreign affairs. Boris Johnson, back in 2017 when he was foreign secretary, might have felt a macho thrill from sending an aircraft carrier to the South China Sea – where it could be sunk in an hour – but Britain’s defences are no more vulnerable to Chinese attack than China’s are to Britain. It is all defence lobby hyperventilation.
Linking British interests to those of the outside world is a paranoid legacy of empire. The corridors of the Foreign Office are hung with pictures of the glory days when foreign secretaries would lay down the law of acceptable behaviour to lesser regimes abroad. The UK’s relationship toward China is no different. In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, visiting British ministers were told to “raise human rights issues” in any meeting with their opposite numbers – as James Cleverly was tasked to do on a recent visit to Beijing. This they duly did, with a certain embarrassment. The response was always a dignified Chinese nod and smile. A Chinese acquaintance told me they felt sorry for the British for having to be rude their hosts. The calibration of any nation’s response to events beyond its shores has to walk a fine line between promoting universal human rights and pointless grandstanding. The repression of dissenters and treatment of minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang should be condemned, but there are limitations on what western powers can do.
